Dear {NOMEUTENTE}Riccardo Felicetti is right when he writes, here below, that talking about pasta is never easy, especially durum wheat pasta. It is necessary to underline it, since that one is really ours. Obviously, we are not the only ones making fresh pasta and spaghetti too has caused a great deal of comments in Asia, provided that attention is shifted from “al dente” (underdone) cooking, which is the pride of us Italians, to sauce.
Those foreigners, who have first known pasta in their country often in a restaurant passed off as Italian, are very surprised at the world they discover once they arrive to Italy. They go mad with joy and want to know more.
And we too, so much that on the occasion of the tenth edition of Identità Golose in Milan, always held in the venue of via Gattamelata, the day Identità di Pasta will be celebrated on Tuesday, February 11. Leitmotiv: dry pasta. Among the speakers there will be two foreign chefs, one Basque and one Japanese. Next Monday, December 2, the whole program will be online at the website of Identità.
Paolo Marchi, texts by Gabriele Zanatta |
| |
Felicetti: mission Japan I woke up with a start and here in Tokyo it’s about two and something at night. We are here to talk about pasta. Tomorrow my cousin Stefano and I will have the opportunity to meet a delegation of important representatives of the Japanese distribution to directly tell the characteristics of this extraordinary product. Durum wheat, water, air, technique and a lot of passion to combine these ingredients, which are the fruit of the work of Mother Nature and man, in a lasting way.
Talking about pasta seems easy but it isn’t, especially in this period. Luckily besides us pasta- makers increasingly more chefs undertake to exalt this extraordinary food both in Italy and abroad, proposing new dishes every day, updating recipes or turning the basic concept of the use of pasta upside down, without ever distorting its nature. We are grateful to all of them because nobody has the power to communicate the essence of pasta as the chefs: it is good, always good.
Tomorrow we will be asked to talk about tradition, environment, nature, agriculture and technology. We will be given the opportunity to go deeply into unusual subjects as environmental sustainability, nutritional aspects and many other characteristics distinguishing pasta. It shouldn’t be necessary because also here in Japan, which is one of the five most important Countries for our export, the increased interest in pasta can be perceived and we hope it will continue in the future too.
Riccardo Felicetti
|
| |
Luca Caviola: the Spaghettone wins Luca Caviola is the sous-chef of the restaurant L’Chimpl da Tamion in Vigo di Fassa, region Trentino. A few days ago he won the award for the best salty dish within the Premio Birra Moretti Grand Cru. (Birra Moretti Grand Cru Award) It’s a pasta dish, the only one presented by the 10 competitors.
«I have chosen spaghettoni», the boy explained, «because it’s an effective symbol of Italy in the world. I wanted to play with tastes: the bitter and sour of pasta which go well together with vanilla and the toasted aroma of the hop shoot. All this mixed to the beef tail ragout – the fancy part of this dish. The crunchy is given by lichen fried bread crumbs and the toasted barley sauce helps defining the dish. I chose Birra Moretti because of its easy taste which doesn’t prevail on the other ingredients». The Award jury appreciated «the courage to present a deeply Italian dish which was much easier to do wrong than well. He succeeded and made an amazing dish also for the use of unusual raw materials». Here is the recipe.
Matt Wheat Spaghettoni with beef tail, wild hop and barley
Recipe for 5 persons
INGREDIENTS
for the base of the spaghettone cooking
400 g Felicetti Matt Spaghettoni
250 g Birra Moretti La Rossa
500 g Birra moretti Grand Cru
1000 g chicken white stock
70 g extra-virgin olive oil
30 g trentin grana cheese
5 g salt
1 g Sarawak pepper
10/15 tips of wild hop/hop shoot
½ vanilla berry
In a rondeaux reduce the two beers on a low heat until obtaining half of the product, then add the stock and reduce again by half. Adjust the taste and blast chill.
Cook spaghettoni for 3 minutes in the kettle, then drain it and continue cooking by sautéing it with the base: use the remaining two minutes to mix pasta with extra-virgin olive oil and grana cheese. Add the raw hop shoot tips and the vanilla and finish whipping.
for the beef tail ragout
1 beef tail
1 golden onion
2 carrots
1 celery
½ leek
1 garlic clove
2 cuore di bue tomato
500 g Birra Moretti Baffo d’oro
2 l beef white stock
Rosemary, sage, anise, salt and pepper.
Cut the tail in rings following the vertebra joint. Separately, boil the beer with all the aromatic herbs and pour cold over the tail. Pickle for 24 hours. Drain the tail, brown it (adding salt and pepper) and place it over a baking tray; brown the vegetables and add them to the meat. Simmer with the beer and continue cooking with the white stock. At the end of it, after about 4 hours, cool the meat and pick it clean, add it to the cooking stock filtered from aromatic herbs, to a vegetable brunoise (made with the same vegetables composing the cooking bouquette), mix and adjust taste.
for the toasted barley sauce
70 g pearl barley
700 g water
60 g almonds
8 g cane sugar
3 g salt
1 g pepper
Toast barley with salt until obtaining a dark color, dampen with water and make it boil, let in infusion for one hour and filter.
Reduce until obtaining about 45 grams, adjust taste with sugar and pepper, and freeze in a paco-jet glass with the toasted almonds.
Pacotize until obtaining a smooth buttery mass, then adjust its density adding lukewarm water and using the mini-pimer.
for the fried bread crumbs
1000 g flour 00
35 g sugar
20 g salt
30 g yeast
50 g soft butter
500 g water
1 egg
20 g malt
140 g milk
20 g Icelandic lichen
Knead like bread, have the dough rest covered and share it into 3 aluminum plum-cake moulds. Leaven for 90 minutes at 23° and cook for 30 minutes at 190°. Blast chill, coarsely whip and brown in a pan with butter and cane sugar.
HOW TO SERVE
Place the ragout in the middle of the dish using a circular mould of about 5 cm, put a nestle of spaghettoni over it. Draw two stripes with the barley sauce on the dish and sprinkle spaghettoni with fried bread crumbs. |
| |
American Academy pays homage to Italy An American coming and teach how to cook pasta in Rome? It isn’t nonsense but a part of a good project. “Pasta” is in fact the basic title of the book presented at the American Academy in Rome last Saturday. The Academy, created with the aim of giving an opportunity to study Italian art and culture at close range to US students and artists, is also the promoter of the Rome Sustainable Food Project launched in 2007 by Alice Waters, American guru of sustainable food.
The project wanted to enclose cooking to the program (under the banner of eco-sustainability) to add a last and crucial element to the Italian “experience”. In this background, pasta could only have the role of the protagonist. Christopher Boswell, executive chef at the RSFP has chosen to devote to the Italian product par excellence his recipe book which follows the other two titles published by Mona Talbott, former executive chef at the Academy: "Biscuits" and "Soups". Boswell, who started his career in the kitchen as dishwasher and attended the California Culinary Academy, has worked for a long time at Chez Panisse with Alice Waters who then wanted him to lead the kitchen of the RSFP. With the help of Elena Goldblatt – his trainee in the kitchen in 2011 – he collected not only quite faithful recipes of the first courses of Italian tradition (often lightened) but also anecdotes, techniques and suggestions to cook pasta at best. All illustrated by beautiful pictures taken by the New York photographer Annie Schlechter.
On the occasion of the dinner to present the book the American Academy opened its doors, which generally can be crossed only by its members, to journalists and curious who could admire the very beautiful settings of the structure. Among them the vegetable garden and the orchard where many of the ingredients used for the recipes of the book and the proposed dishes are grown, from the fusilli with black cabbage pesto to the garden salad. Therefore, no nonsense as we said, but a love act towards this noble product and the Italian gastronomic culture. |
| |
Scabin/Rambaldi: from dumpling to ceviche Since we started the course of Identità di Pasta, almost 4 years ago, nobody gave us ideas and contributions as Davide Scabin did. It is because to the chef from Rivoli the world of durum wheat and surroundings progressively looses its most bulky historical meanings, those sinkers and thus pasta is allowed to reappear little by little quicker, lighter and free from the darkness of abysses.
Giuseppe Rambaldi, at the Combal.Zero for 14 years, has always played a fundamental role in this freedom movement. «The chef and I confront about everything», he explains «but don’t ask me who had the greatest part in conceiving this or that dish: I will never say it». Therefore, the question about that wonderful Fried raviolo with pickles and sliced calf’s head in a broth of Iberian Jamon de Bellota 5J and oysters, true and “in foil” (picture) tasted in Rivoli one night at the beginning of November isn’t asked. However, there is still the question about its genesis: «We wanted to propose the dumpling of Chinese tradition forcing it in oil. It is the iodized world that clashes against the wild sweet of the great Spanish jam, we used also in the broth to prevent the dumpling from remaining gummy». A great dish mixing tender, crunchy and liquid.
And another one followed, the Spago & ceviche, a development of the Spaghetti Pizza Margherita, such a successful dish that it became the symbol of Identità Milano 2011. Here too, never remaining stopped at the fixity of icons: «Once again we wanted sea saltiness and pork to become part of this innovation classic dish. They are present with a bisque and an extremely jelly broth of pork feet where spaghetti has been left cooling. It is a provocation by Davide: everybody talks about ceviche, but Peru is here». The Andes in Rivoli. |
| |
The long and deep sleep by Ciccio Sultano To Ciccio Sultano of the restaurant Duomo in Ragusa Ibla the invention of pasta relates to the world of maintenance of the family, preserves and prolongs life during difficult periods, is the result of a technique whose purpose is not different from that of drying, salting and all those alchemies extending the longevity of food. Fuel for the winter long and deep sleep.
This intention of conservation of mankind was behind the Sesame spaghetti with tuma cheese, sea lettuce, mauro seed, and lapsang souchong in the picture. «The fresh pasta we make», the chef explains, «has an average shelf life of 5 days». Once the store-room has been filled up, everybody is free to draw from the unlimited wealth of the insular products. Tuma for instance «is a cheese me and the sous-chef Marco Corallo obtain from the lamb curd, adding no salt. We add half lemon in 4 liters of buttermilk. When the curd ‘falls’ we put it into the moulds».
The sheep tuma cheese, tender and slightly sour «could accompany very well sea vegetables, similar both in shape and taste: sea lettuce and Mauro seed. While the sesame in the spaghetti dough reminds me a Thai dish I tasted when I was working in New York City (at Felidia, with Fortunato Nicotra and Lidia Bastianich, 15 years ago editor’s note) The Lapsang Souchong tea gives the final smoky touch».
A long and deep sleep of Asian abysses, which completes all the other reserve dishes enriching the menu of Via Capitano Bocchieri, from the now renowned Spaghetti with taratatà Moorish sauce to the very personal interpretation of the Pasta with Sprats up to the Mare Nostrum Fusilli. |
| |
Sagn’ c’ la m’dicca: Lucanian memories The Gallotta sisters and their daughters and nephews dress their table in the heart of the main street of Bernalda, Matera. A couple of buildings further up, along the same street, there is the family house of the Coppolas (Francis Ford and Sophia) renewed to become Palazzo Margherita, buen retiro for a small number of foreigners looking for exoticisms. Classes of typical cooking are organized. At the Locandiera the typical cooking can be eaten; it is cooked and explained by the only man in the house, the youngest, accepted in this gastronomical group of women. Francesco Russo, maître and sommellier who trained between the La Francescana in Modena and the Duomo in Alba, will explain the dishes of the house, of all the houses of this rough part of Lucania, and will underline when the habit of his house differs from the widespread custom.
Capriata, bread and egg balls with sauce, cialledda (peppers, tomatoes and eggs), the horse chop to obtain the ragout for the pasta, the lamb braised meat (which improves the real braised meat of this area which is made with old sheep, a real delicacy) and the sagn’ c’ la ‘mdicca. The sagn’ is what elsewhere in the Basilicata region (and the surroundings) is called lasagna or lagana; lagana is actually what remains from the word “lahana” which had more than a aspirate “h” … a blown one. To make it short it’s a tagliatella without eggs, larger and less long and sometimes laced on the sides.
The dish is a dough of water and flour (the sagn’) dressed with the powder of dried pepper and if you like (and we know that you like) spicy chili pepper. Pasta is dressed with fried bread crumbs to give the salty taste, the pepper powder to give the tomato color and the spicy taste which has always been used by poor people to accompany bread. The sagn’ c’ la m’dicca is the dish that more than any other tells about Basilicata, especially about what it has been, its tradition and typical character people look for and when they find it they get round of it. The sagn’ c’ la m’dicca is the genius of poverty which has been the only faithful companion of my people for centuries. The sagn’ c’ la m’dicca is the Basilicata region. During the cooking classes two buildings below the street they tell another story. But people sleep wonderfully.
Giulio Bagnale |
| |
Donnalucata, carrots and tuna buzzonaglia I happened that at the end of November we had the opportunity to taste a summer pasta dish a short way from the sea. It happened at the Consiglio di Sicilia in Donnalucata, a happy sea hamlet south of Modica and Ragusa. «The original version», Roberta Corradin, writer and wife of the chef Antonio Cicero explains, «is Spaghetti with carrots and tuna buzzonaglia. The dish was conceived by Antonio during the spring of 2012, when the Consortium of the new carrot of Ispica invited us to discover this markedly sweet spring carrot. Given the success of the dish we propose it in winter too because, starting from November, the carrot from Donnalucata is available, which is cultivated in the sandy shores».
And what happens when the tuna buzzonaglia ends? «We replace it with mullet roe, thus reviving a pair, that of carrots and mullet roe, created for the first time by Ciccio Sultano – let’s render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Next week we will go to Marzamemi, will get supplies of both mullet roe and tuna buzzonaglia at Campisi and then both versions will be available again».Here is the recipe.
Cut carrots in small pieces, parboil for 4-5 minutes, drain keeping aside the cooking water, toss in the pan with garlic, rosemary, salt and oil; add a bit of cooking water, cover, boil gently for 10 minutes, eliminate garlic and rosemary, whip.
Cook spaghetti very “al dente” (underdone), drain it, sauté it with garlic, oil and white wine. Put a bit of carrot cream on the bottom of the dish, place the spaghetti, finish with orange juice, orange and lemon peel, a few drops of lemon, plenty of carrot cream, a pinch of grated raw carrots and pieces of tuna buzzonaglia well drained from the preservation oil. In the version with mullet roe, garnish with small pieces of grated mullet roe. In both cases, garnish with parsley and raw tonda iblea oil by Chiaramonte Gulfi. |
| |
Imitation baked pasta by Misha Sukyas Making Baked pasta without baking it (picture) is possible. That is, you can reproduce the pleasantly burnt gratin pasta even if you don’t have a burning mouth where to put the classical dish of Sunday.
This is what Misha Sukyas, Italian- Armenian chef at L’Alchimista in via Maggi, Milan thinks while he explains that the granular texture can be easily replaced by a tempura and the Bechamel sauce by hot bisque. Let’s see how to do word for word.
Recipe for 1 person
INGREDIENTS
5 pasta conchiglioni
33 g smoked paprika tempura
40 cl. saint-germain cream (peas, onion, bacon and mint)
3 g goose smoked breast
1 coffee-spoon of vanilla scampi bisque
1 scampi sautéed in the goose smoked fat.
PROCEDURE
Boil the conchiglioni for 2 minutes more than “al dente” (underdone) cooking. Dip it in the tempura (previously enriched with smoked paprika) and fry it in boiling oil until it reaches the preferred crunchy point (the gratin sensation). Once it has become crunchy, take the conchiglioni out and fill the hollow part with the Saint-Germain cream using a sac-à-poche. Lay on top the goose smoked breast previously thinly minced. Add the scampi (separately sautéed in the goose smoked fat) and pour the coffee-spoon of bisque. |
| |
|
